


5 Times Cassandra Was Dead, +1 Time She Was Alive

by aunt_zelda



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Casual Sex, Child Abuse, Execution, Fugue, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Other, Pregnancy, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Abuse, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 21:51:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9627032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/pseuds/aunt_zelda
Summary: The short and tragic life of Cassandra de Rolo has been fraught with several deaths and near-deaths. (A character exploration fic.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've been dwelling on Cassandra de Rolo quite a bit lately. I realized that in her mind, she's probably "died" several times, and that reflecting on that might be a good subject for a fic. 
> 
> I ended up mixing in a lot of my headcanons for what happened to Cassandra during those five years. Which includes a lot of disturbing content.
> 
>  
> 
> I tried to warn for all the applicable triggers/warnings. If you feel I've neglected to tag for something, please do not hesitate to point it out and I will happily add new tags! My intention is always to give people the proper warning ahead of time for dark fics.

1.

Cassandra is thirteen and she thinks she has died of fright. 

She can’t breathe, and she thinks even her heartbeat has stopped. 

Maybe if she stays perfectly still, hidden in this spot beneath the stairs that nobody knows about, not even Ludwig, she will die as peacefully as the old cook did in her sleep. 

Cassandra doesn’t die under the stairs. She breathes again, shallowly, faintly, and crawls through the dark tunnels and chambers. 

She finds Percival, strapped to a table and covered in blood and scars. She frees him, and they escape together. 

 

2\. 

Cassandra is thirteen when she is nearly shot to death. 

The bolts lodge in her shoulder, her back, toppling her into the snow. There are dark spots on the snow, speckled and inky. She dimly understands that the dark spots are blood, her blood. 

Percival screams, staring back at her in horror. 

Cassandra falls into the snow. She cannot move. 

She hears Percival running away. She hears the guards running closer. 

Cassandra falls into a spiraling blackness. She thinks she is dying. She thinks she is dead. 

 

3.

Cassandra is fourteen and her year has been spent in pain. 

The healers are weak and their supplies are meager and Cassandra’s wounds fester. Her blood tries to poison her. Fevers wrack her body. She barely keeps down water. 

Several times, Cassandra sleeps and prays for death to take her as she dreams. 

Once, she begs the healers to let her die, or to give her the right herbs to stop her heart. 

They refuse. They call her delusional, from her fever they say. She doesn’t know what she’s saying, they insist. 

Cassandra is fourteen, but she knows what she has asked for. Cassandra knows what she has been denied. 

 

4\. 

Cassandra has just turned fifteen, and has lead dozens of men and women to their deaths. 

She watches the few survivors dragged to the Sun Tree and hanged. Hanging, she learns, takes a very long time to kill. She watches every execution, commits every face to memory. These people died for her, on her behalf: the least she can do is honor them in some small way. 

“Will you hang me alongside them?” she asks the Briarwoods, when the last body has stopped twitching. “I know the ax is more traditional for someone of my birth, but I would prefer the tree.” Her voice doesn’t even tremble. She is not frightened of death, to her surprise. She’s frightened of the Briarwoods though, of what they might do with her before killing her. 

“Hang you? Oh, dear child!” Delilah envelops Cassandra in her arms. “Now that those dangerous, rebellious peasants have been culled, you can return home. Your old room has been kept in readiness.”

Cassandra opens her mouth to beg for death in the town square. She would rather die here and now than live as their hostage, or worse. 

A wave of magic washes over her, stopping her words in her throat and draping heavy blankets on her thoughts. 

Cassandra follows the Briarwoods meekly back to Whitestone castle, effectively a dead woman walking. 

 

5\. 

Cassandra is sixteen and has died a thousand small deaths.

Cassandra wanders the halls of her family home dimly. Night, day, time bleeds like one of Sylas’ victims. 

When she sleeps she wakes from nightmares to a cold and empty bed. 

Lady Delilah teaches her to pin up her hair like a proper lady. Cassandra stabs her in the hand with a pin and Lady Delilah only laughs. 

The undead servants do not frighten her. Cassandra envies them, beyond the hurt of the Briarwoods, beyond fear or pain. They merely move, and obey. Cassandra knows she will join their ranks eventually, unless she renders her body utterly unusable. Fire, she knows, would prevent that. But fire is such a dreadful way to die, she fears even now she is not numbed enough for that. 

When she sleeps she wakes to Sylas raking his teeth along her neck. 

Cassandra smuggles messages to the villagers, but sometimes she gives the correspondence to the Briarwoods. Some of the hangings have been her fault now. Some of them have been orders Cassandra has signed, with the Briarwoods acting as her regents. The Charm spell no longer controls her, but the emptiness left behind makes Cassandra yearn for its presence sometimes. 

When she sleeps she wakes to Delilah sliding in beside her, wearing her mother’s jewelry and nothing else. 

Johanna de Rolo. Johanna de Rolo. Johanna de Rolo. Johanna de Rolo. Johanna de Rolo.

Morning, noon, even at night, Cassandra wanders the battlements of Whitestone. She walks along the tops of the walls, arms outstretched for balance. She prays to fall, for her feet to slip, but that never happens.

When she sleeps she wakes to one of Sylas’ victims beside her, pale and bloodless. (Sylas likes them dark-haired and young.)

Cassandra idly thinks of Lady Delilah as her mother once, and spends the rest of the evening carving her real mother’s name onto the stonework over and over again. 

She can no longer recall her father’s smile. 

Cassandra wonders sometimes if the Briarwoods killed her in the night, brought her back with magic, and neglected to tell her. 

 

+1

Cassandra is eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one … and she does not die. 

The Briarwoods did not consume her. The villagers do not burn her for the corpse she feels she is. Percival shrugs off her betrayals like so much water from a rainstorm. Dragons come and dragons are felled. 

Cassandra rules her household, leads a Council in Whitestone modeled after Emon’s political structure. She does not lead like Lady Delilah did, nor how her parents lead. She leads as herself. Smug ambassadors, scheming wizards, and various characters seek to cheat or undermine or take advantage of her youth and Whitestone’s resources. Cassandra deals with them firmly and plainly. 

She wears her mother’s vambraces, pins her hair up like Lady Delilah taught her, and recovers the hidden box of Vesper’s jewelry she found years ago and kept secreted from the Briarwoods. Cassandra dresses in black, in gray, in blue, in crimson red. 

When spring comes, Cassandra wears a cloth mask over her eyes and cheeks. She ventures out into the woods and fields with the other young people. Some are masked and some are not. Boys fumble with her and girls giggle with her and eventually, they figure each other out beneath the stars.

Cassandra’s belly swells one year. She knows who the father is, but refuses to name him, not to Percival, not to the Baroness, not to the Council. 

Percival speaks of shame and honor and duty, and Cassandra pushes up her sleeves to show him the places where Sylas’ teeth were not so careful. 

“Please tell me of honor, brother,” she glares at him. “I know all there is to know of shame, and I am done with it.”

After a week, Percival storms into the Council chambers with a dusty book. He’s discovered an old practice, but a valid one, to legitimize her child without a father. 

Cassandra kneels at the Sun Tree and declares her child to be a child of Whitestone, of the Sun Tree, of Pelor. That is enough for everyone else. 

The seasons shift, children grow, and still Cassandra does not die. 

She realizes, after years of the vague dread weighing upon her, that she is supposed to live. 

Cassandra hopes that she can do that.


End file.
